Editor’s Note

As hardened soft journalists, the Lifestyle team finds the idea of Valentine’s Day a bit schmalzy. “Let’s have an anti-Valentine’s Day,” one of us will say when the day looms. What is anti Valentines, even? Black roses, hate mail, mutilated teddy bears?

Now that it’s almost here, I’m rethinking this attitude. I mean, an excuse to brighten up your surroundings with flowers is reason enough for me — even if I have to gift them to myself.

Whenever I’m in Hyde Park, I spend a few moments in Botanicus, an elegantly designed florist with gorgeous blooms on display — if only to take a moment in my busy day to smell the flowers. We asked Johannes van Greunen, owner and creative director at Botanicus, along with three other talented florists, about their bouquet inspiration and tips for keeping flowers fresh.

One of my favourite stories about love is Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “I Just Called To Say I Love You — cell phones, sentimentality and the decline of public space”. Franzen is initially grumpy about having to endure overheard apatetic “love yous” in public spaces, endlessly uttered as a modern-day conversation sign-off. In the essay, he compares two kinds of love — expressed in different ways by his mother (sentimental and overt) and his father (stoic and private). His father’s love language was the more old-fashioned kind, to be felt (mostly by men), and never expressed out loud. His mother’s love was one of expression and effusion, which he found cloying and annoying.

In retrospect, he admits, “…saying ‘I love you’ was simply something she enjoyed doing because her heart was full of feeling”. Read the essay to find out which show of love Franzen now regrets not appreciating more, and all the wonderful expressions of love, in this week’s Lifestyle.

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